PHILOSOPHY AS

A WAY OF LIFE
MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI
Philosophy as a Way of Life

A selection of essays in association with the Figs in Winter

newsletter published by Massimo Pigliucci at Substack

Copyright 2023 by Massimo Pigliucci

Cover image: Epicurus’ Garden, from classicalwisdom.com

Word count: ~7,700

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 Index

Preface 4
I—How to run a philosophical school 5
II—Spiritual exercises 14
III-Socrates and the finest state of the human soul 27
IV-Only the present is our happiness 36

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 Preface

The e-book you are, hopefully, about to enjoy is a

collection of essays in practical philosophy originally
published at Figs in Winter, my Substack newsletter.

I’ve been writing about philosophy as a way of life for a

good number of years now, beginning with my rst book
on the topic, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and
Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life,
continuing with the well received How to Be a Stoic: Using
Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life, and a number of
others.

This series of e-booklets (free to download) collects essays

that are thematically related and, I think, interesting and
useful.

Enjoy, and remember, Philosophia longa, vita brevis!

~Massimo Pigliucci

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 I—How to run a philosophical school

Whether we realize it or not, we all have a philosophy of

life. Often it consists in whatever religious creed and
practices one has been raised with. At other times it is the
result of a conscious choice. Even those who don’t think
about philosophy or religion still have a certain
understanding of the world and how to act within it—which
means that they have a (implied) life philosophy.
If this is the case, we may as well be conscious of what
kind of philosophy we practice and why. And at least
occasionally we may want to question whether such
philosophy is really what we want. If the answer is yes,
good. If it’s no, then perhaps the time has come to consider
possible alternatives.
A good number of the possible alternatives on the table
belong to a cluster of Greco-Roman philosophies of life
developed during the millennium between the 5th century
BCE and the fth century CE, give or take. It’s hard to
imagine a better guide to those practical philosophies than
French scholar Pierre Hadot, for instance in his book
Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from
Socrates to Foucault. The series of essays of which this is
the rst installment is devoted to a summary and
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discussion of Hadot’s ideas as put forth in that book, in the
hope of being helpful to people who are either in the
process of choosing a new philosophy for themselves or
are practicing one already and want to get better at it.
Hadot reasonably suggests that ancient philosophical
schools thrived—and have therefore come to be known to
us—when their founders established them as institutions:
Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, Epicurus’ Garden, and
Zeno’s Stoa. (By contrast, for instance, we know little of the
Cyrenaics.) In addition to these we have what Hadot calls
two spiritual traditions: Skepticism (in two forms:
Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism) and Cynicism.
From around the third century Platonism began a
process of synthesis of Aristotelianism and Stoicism, while
the remaining traditions gradually faded away. The
resulting Neoplatonism will come to dominate the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, setting the stage for the
modern era. In other words, Greco-Roman philosophy did
not die with the end of the classical period, but shaped
western thought (and beyond) for another millennium and
a half after that, and is still very much with us today.
Hadot says that to philosophize meant to enact a deep
rapture with bios, that is, the normal life conducted by most
people. Philosophers, in other words, rejected commonly
accepted priorities in favor of rather unusual ones, like
virtue, or mental tranquillity, or the suspension of
judgment. As a result, philosophers were seen as strange
and potentially dangerous, and made fun of by the public
and by comics like Aristophanes, who in his The Clouds

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(423 BCE) made fun of a certain Socrates, often referred to
as atopos, meaning unclassi able. This strangeness and
unclassi ability may have contributed to Socrates’ trial and
execution in 399 BCE. (Certainly Plato held Aristophanes in
part responsible for that unfortunate turn of events.)

Pierre Hadot, from modernstoicism.com

Part of what made practical philosophy a bit “strange,”

from the point of view of the person in the street, so to
speak, was that the various schools conjured their own
version of the sage, a hypothetical individual whose ideal
life was, again, a stark departure from the life of common
people. Consider, for instance, the Stoic sage, who never
gets angry or upset, and always tackles problems by way of
rational analysis. Moreover, the Stoic sage has very different
priorities from the rest of humanity. For her things like
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 health, wealth, reputation, and career are “indifferents,”
meaning that they have value but do not affect the most
important thing of them all: our character.
It’s not clear whether the Stoics thought that sages
actually exist. Seneca tells us (in his 42nd Letter to Lucilius)
that they are as rare as the mythological phoenix, which
rises from its ashes once every 500 years. Nevertheless, the
gure of the sage is crucial because it plays a role
analogous to that of Jesus in Christianity, or Buddha in
Buddhism: it represents an ideal toward which we ought to
be striving, regardless of how challenging it may be.
In order to help us practitioners each school devised
“spiritual” exercises aimed at ethical self-improvement. I
will devote a separate post to exploring this notion in some
detail, but the two major kinds of exercises are concerned
with self-control and meditation.
Self-control is about paying attention to oneself,
learning to better handle anger, speech, love of wealth,
and all the other “externals.” The goal is to develop a stable
and good character. Socrates, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia
(IV.5) argues that self-control is the key to all the other
virtues.
Meditation, by contrast, is about exercising reason. It’s
very different from its Buddhist counterpart and it consists
in re ecting on and assimilating the rules of conduct
according to each school. The goal, ultimately, is to change
one’s entire view of life and what it is about.
The philosophical practitioner makes progress by
learning to keep a series of basic precepts always “at hand”

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for use in whatever situation presents itself. The entire
Enchidirion by Epictetus is a collection of such handy
recommendations.
This practice and progress, Hadot reminds us,
emphasizes two practical objectives: living in the present,
the only time where our agency is effective; and preparing
oneself for death, so that one can live and enjoy life in full
consciousness, mindful that such life is nite and that we
don’t really know when it will end.
In order to train in one of the Greco-Roman schools
theory was obviously necessary, but certainly not as an end
in itself (as it is, unfortunately, the case in much
contemporary academic philosophy). Theory is valuable
only if it aids practice, as Epictetus forcefully reminds his
students in his inimitably sarcastic style:

“‘I want to know what Chrysippus has to say in his

treatise about the Liar.’ Why don’t you go off and hang
yourself, you wretch, if that is really what you want? And
what good will it do you to know it? You’ll read the whole
book from one end to the other while grieving all the while,
and you’ll be trembling when you expound it to others.
And the rest of you behave like that too. ‘Would you like
me to read something out, brother, and you can do so for
me in turn?’—‘My friend, you write astoundingly well.’—‘And
so do you, splendidly, quite in the style of Xenophon.’
—‘And you in the style of Plato.’—‘And you in the style of
Antisthenes.’ And then, when you’ve recounted your
dreams to one another, you fall back into the same old

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faults; you have the same desires as before, the same
aversions, the same motives, plans, and intentions, you ask
for the same things in your prayers, and have the same
[misguided] preoccupations.” (Discourses, II.17.34-36)

Ouch. A friend of mine once suggested that Epictetus

must have sounded like Rocky Balboa’s trainer, dispensing
tough love to his students in Nicopolis. Just like an athlete
picks a trainer and sticks with the choice, the rst step to
adopt philosophy as a way of life in ancient Greece and
Rome was to choose a school (and a teacher) and try to
stick to its principles in one’s everyday life. Stoicism and
Epictetus; or Peripateticism and Aristotle. But not both.
Nowadays, however, there aren’t many opportunities to
walk into an equivalent of Epicurus’s Garden, or to stop by
the local Stoa and listen to Zeno. Instead, we read the
ancient texts and try our best to interpret them in a way
that makes sense to modern audiences. One reason this
may be challenging, at least initially, is because those texts
were written in a manner that was still very much in uenced
by the oral traditions that preceded them. Don’t forget that
several philosophers, including Socrates and Epictetus,
didn’t write anything at all. As Hadot puts it:

“Quite often the work proceeds by the associations of

ideas, without systematic rigor. The work retains the starts
and stops, the hesitations, and the repetitions of spoken
discourse.” (p. 62)

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 When it came to teaching philosophy, the written word
was chie y seen as an aid to memory. The real work was
done during conversations between teachers and students,
as we can glimpse from the Socratic dialogues by both
Plato and Xenophon, as well as by the Discourses of
Epictetus, a collection of interactions of the master with his
students put together by Arrian of Nicomedia. Indeed,
often the texts were meant to accompany the teacher’s
lessons, as in pretty much everything that survived by
Aristotle. That’s why we can’t read these works as if they
were aimed at a general public, modern or not. And that is
why the work of modern translators and commentators is
so important in order to get the rest of us to appreciate
Greco-Roman thought.

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 If you frequented one of the ancient schools, a major
exercise for you and your fellow students would be to
discuss a given theme either dialectically (i.e., in the form
of questions and answers) or rhetorically (i.e., as a
continuous exposition). The theme was often posed as a
question to get the student started: Is death an evil? Does
the wise person ever get angry? You can read this way
Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and Plotinus, that is, the vast
majority of the surviving ancient sources.
Another exercise for a student may be to read and
engage in the exegesis of a given authoritative text, pretty
much what I’m doing here with Hadot himself. After all, in
order to explain it to others, you have to rst understand it
well yourself! This is why we have a large number of
commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and so forth surviving
from antiquity.
Whatever the form, writings from the ancient schools
always have the aim not just to expound on a particular
topic, but to help readers along their spiritual journey, as
Hadot explicitly reminds us:

“One must always approach a philosophical work of

antiquity with this idea of spiritual progress in mind.” (p. 64)

Ultimately, according to the traditions we are

discussing, we only need ourselves (not externals) to nd
happiness, here and now, no need to worry about either
the past or the future—both of which are outside of our
control anyway. The corollary is that if you can’t be happy

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now, you’ll never be happy. Happiness, in a very important
sense, is an inside job. Accordingly, Hadot concludes his
analysis of how the ancient schools were run with the
following observation:

“The concern with individual destiny and spiritual

progress, the intrans gent assertion of moral requirements,
the call for meditation, the invitation to seek this inner
peace that all the schools, even those of the skeptics,
propose as the aim of philosophy, the feeling for the
seriousness and grandeur of existence, this seems to me to
be what has never been surpassed in ancient philosophy
and what always remains alive.” (p. 69)

And those are precisely the reasons we still very much

engage the Greco-Romans and keep learning from them.

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 II—Spiritual exercises

A crucial part of my practice as a Stoic-Skeptic is a set of

spiritual exercises, without which I would simply be doing
armchair philosophy. The notion of a “spiritual” exercise
may be a bit off putting, as it is associated with Christianity
or with fuzzy sounding new age mysticism. But Pierre
Hadot, in his Philosophy as a Way of Life, argues that there
really isn’t any better term to capture what is meant, so we’ll
stick with that.
The term comes from Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of
the Jesuits, who wrote Exercitia Spiritualia in 1548. The
approach, however, much predates not just Loyola, but
Christianity itself. Exercises of this kind contribute to what
Hadot’s refers to as “the therapeutic of the passions,” which
is a crucial component of Greco-Roman philosophical
training. According to the ancients, the passions—meaning
unhealthy emotions, like anger and fear, but also lust—are
the main source of our suffering. Hadot refers to them as
“unreg lated desires and exaggerated fears.” They get in
the way of a serene life founded on reason, which is why
we need to train ourselves to handle them appropriately.
The Greek word for the resulting practices is askesis,
from which the English word asceticism comes, though the
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Greek meaning was broader than the modern one,
applying to a general approach to train oneself to live a
more meaningful life. As Hadot puts it:

“[Philosophy] raises the individual from an inauthentic

condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and
harassed by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which he
attains self-consciousness, an exact vision of the world,
inner peace, and freedom.” (p. 83)

Image from jesuits.org

As much as we talk with some con dence about ancient

spiritual exercises (the pertinent literature in modern
Stoicism is now considerable!) we don’t really have any
systematic treatise from antiquity on such exercises. The
closest we come are two lists by the Platonist Philo of

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Alexandria (20 BCE-50 CE). The lists are found in Who is
the Heir of Divine Things (section 253) and in Allegorical
Interpretations (section 3.18). The items are partially
overlapping, and Hadot conveniently groups them into
three categories:

Meditations: comprising philosophical journaling

(including but not limited to the premeditatio malorum, or
premeditation on adversity); attention and the fundamental
rule of life; gratitude exercises.

Active exercises: self—mastery; therapy of the

passions; accomplishment of duties.

Intellectual exercises: listening, reading, and inquiring.

Let’s take a closer look. Philosophical journaling consists

of writing down, on a daily basis, if possible, our analyses
of our own ethically salient actions. The objective is to learn
from our mistakes as well as from what we have done well,
and the trick is to use objective, not emotional language.
Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, written in the second person
in order to help putting some emotional distance between
the agent and his own actions, are a splendid example.
The fundamental rule of life comes from Epictetus, and
it is often unfortunately referred to as the dichotomy of
control. (Unfortunately because the word “control” is highly
misleading in this context.) The idea is that some things are
up to us, meaning that we are ultimately responsible for

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them, and some are not. And that a good life is the result of
focusing on the rst group, where our agency is
maximized, while developing an attitude of acceptance
and equanimity toward the second group. If my ight is
cancelled, that is not up to me. What is up to me is to act
reasonably while looking for a plan B (e.g., don’t yell at the
customer agent, who is not at fault either!), and then
spending whatever idle time I’ll have to endure doing
something good, like reading a book.
Book I of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a model of
exercises in gratitude. We all have something and someone
to be thankful for in life, and it is therapeutic—also
according to modern science—from time to time to pause
and explicitly acknowledge it to ourselves.
Self-mastery has to do with any practice of the cardinal
virtue of temperance, which Socrates thought was essential
to the virtuous life. For instance, pay attention to what and
how much you eat and drink, every day, as suggested by
the Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus in his Lectures.
To engage in a therapy of the passions means to remind
ourselves that “externals,” like health, wealth, reputation,
and so forth, are of secondary importance in life, compared
to our character and judgment. As modern cognitive
behavioral therapists would say, let us not “catastrophize”
every setback and instead focus on what, if anything, we
can do about it. Did you just lose your job? Not the end of
the world, give yourself a break and then start looking for
another one.

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 Accomplishment of duties is a major exercise which
reminds us that we have duties toward other human
beings, beginning of course with our family and friends,
but extending to all of humanity. Even a simply phone call
or text message to check in with someone will be
appreciated. So do it.
Listening means to engage, whenever possible, in
Socratic conversations with other people. These days, you
may be tempted to carry out this exercise using social
media. Don’t. Instead, reconnect with people in person. It’s
much more human.
Reading speci cally refers to primary texts by ancient
authors like Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, and
so forth. You don’t need to do a lot of this, just a few
paragraphs a day will do. The goal is to remind yourself
why Greco-Roman philosophy is still so relevant to us
denizens of the 21st century. Think of it as the
philosophical equivalent of a religious person reading
Scriptures.
Inquiring can be done in a variety of ways, but for most
of us it is a second exercise in reading, this time aimed at
modern literature in science and philosophy. The goal is to
keep learning about the world and how it works, which in
turn will give us a better idea of our place in that world.
Although Hadot himself does not do so, I link the three
groups with the three disciplines of Epictetus, respectively:
desire and aversion; action; and assent. After all,
meditations are meant to help us re-orient our values and
priorities (desires and aversions); active exercises are about

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how to act in the world; and listening, reading, and
inquiring have to do with re ning our knowledge of the
world and of our abilities to reason about it, thus leading to
better judgments (assent) on our part.

Young Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Company of

Jesus, Wikimedia

Overall, these exercises, especially the meditative ones,

are attempts at taking control of our inner discourse, so
that we are more consciously aware of our choices and can

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guide ourselves to act accordingly. They are also meant to
create and reinforce habits, because that is how we can
mindfully become more virtuous, as both Plato and
Aristotle have argued.
There are a number of speci c books from the Greco-
Roman literature that expand on these practices, including
but not limited to: Seneca’s On Anger, On Bene ts, On
Leisure, and On Peace of Mind; as well as Plutarch’s On
Brotherly Love, On Envy and Hatred, On False Shame, On
Garrulity, On the Love of Children, On the Love of Wealth,
On Peace of Mind, and On Restraining Anger.
While nowadays we associate spiritual exercises with
Stoicism, the Epicureans adopted the same idea. As the
founder of the school put it: “We must concern ourselves
with the healing of our own lives.” (Epicurus, Gnomologium
Vaticanum, §64. See also Letter to Menoeceus, §122) The
Epicureans, like the Stoics, recommended frequent
meditation, for instance on their famous four-fold cure, the
Tetrapharmakos:

“God presents no fears, death no worries. And while

good is readily attainable, evil is readily endurable.”
(Philodemus, Adversus sophistas, 4.10-14)

Hadot, however, contrasts the way Stoics and

Epicureans carried out the spiritual exercise of trying to live
in the current moment. For the Stoics it meant constant
attention to the moral dimension of everything we do; for
the Epicureans it translated into an invitation to relaxation

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to achieve serenity, as in the famous “Carpe diem” by
Horace:

“Life ebbs as I speak / so seize each day, and grant the

next no credit.” (Odes, 1.11.7)

I mentioned above the famous Socratic dialogue. It was

meant as a form of communal spiritual exercise, as Socrates
himself explains:

“I did not care for the things that most people care
about—making money, having a comfortable home, high
military or civil rank, and all the other activities, political
appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which
go on in our city. … I set myself to do you—each one of you,
individually and in private—what I hold to be the greatest
possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to
concern himself less with what he has than with what he is,
so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as
possible.” (Plato, Apology, 36b4-c6)

Similarly, the famous Delphic injunction, know thyself,

which Socrates takes too heart and attempt to teach to his
friends, means to know that we are not sages, and yet that
we strive to become wise, which is possible through the
constant and honest examination of our conscience.
Meditation can be understood as another form of
“dialogue,” this time with oneself. It was widely practiced by
Socrates’ disciples. Hadot tells us that when Antisthenes

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was asked what pro t he had derived from philosophy, his
response was: “The ability to converse with myself.”
(Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 6.6)
The point of the sort of practices we are talking about
was not to set down doctrines to memorize and blindly
follow, but rather to nudge the student toward developing
a mental attitude of self- and cross-examination. This is
philosophy, after all, not religion! Accordingly, notice the
use of dialectic, that is, the art of persuasion. We need to
convince ourselves— rst and foremost—of what we are
doing, so that we do it willingly and effectively. Talking to
others, however, does not have the direct aim of
convincing them that we are right, but rather of stimulating
in them the same sort of self-re ection in which we willingly
engage. The caveat lies in Hadot’s remarks:

“Dialogue is only possible if the interlocutor has a real

desire to dialogue: that is, if he truly wants to discover the
truth, desires the Good from the depths of his soul, and
agrees to submit to the rational demands of the Logos.” (p.
93)

There is another, major goal behind spiritual exercises.

According to the Greco-Romans, philosophy prepares us
for what Seneca called the ultimate test of character: our
own death. In this respect, Hadot reminds us of what
Socrates says to one of his friends just before taking the
hemlock:

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 “It is a fact, Simmias, that those who go about
philosophizing correctly are in training for death, and that
to them of all men death is least alarming.” (Plato, Phaedo,
67e)

We nd similar sentiments in Seneca, Epicurus, and all

the way to Montaigne and beyond. One way to engage in
this training is summarized by Horace:

“Believe that each day that has dawned will be your last;
then you will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.”
(Letter 1.4.13-14)

Three interrelated key concepts are pertinent to

training for death:

(i) Adopting of a universal view of things; (ii) Re ecting

on the cosmic insigni cance of human affairs; (ii)
Regarding death as natural and unproblematic.

Physics, in the broad sense of science, then becomes a

contemplative activity, good for the soul because it helps
us to put things in perspective. This can take the form of an
imaginative exercise of ying over the world, looking at it
from a distance, the famous “view from above” that we
repeatedly nd in Marcus Aurelius (e.g., Meditations XII.24).
Hadot says:

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 “[There] is a parallelism between physical and spiritual
exercises: just as, by dint of repeated physical exercises,
athletes give new form and strength to their bodies, so the
philosopher develops his strength of soul, modi es his
inner climate, transforms his vision of the world, and, nally,
his entire being.” (p. 102)

It is no coincidence that philosophy was taught in the

gymnasion, the same place were people carried out
physical exercises. Imagine if we could conceive a modern
gym in the same way: mens sana in corpore sano indeed!
(If you happen to have the capital to give the idea a try,
drop me a note…)
Given all the above, it is fair to say that the ultimate goal
of spiritual exercises is a search for authenticity, if you will,
with the goal to liberate our true self. This being our moral
self, open to a universal perspective, participating in
universal nature. And the way to achieve this is to practice
philosophy, the love of wisdom. Constantly, every day.
Spiritual exercises of the kind we have been discussing
imply the rejection of common values, such as the
importance of wealth, reputation, and pleasures, in favor of
virtue, contemplation, and a minimalist life style. No
wonder philosophers have always been considered to be
on this side of weird! Hadot goes so far as to state:

“It is impossible to understand the philosophical

theories of antiquity without taking into account this

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concrete perspective, since this is what gives them their
true meaning.” (p. 104)

How is it, then, that much modern philosophy has

become a (more or less sterile) exercise in hair-splitting,
almost entirely devoid of practical utility? Hadot blames the
Christians. From its beginnings, Christianity presented itself
as a philosophy, steeped as it soon came to be into Greco-
Roman culture. However, after Christianity had taken over
the Roman Empire, and after antiquity had given way to the
Middle Ages, the advent of Scholasticism brought about a
distinction between theology and philosophy.
Philosophy was reduced to the status of “handmaid” to
theology, providing the latter with conceptual, and
therefore purely theoretical material. According to Hadot,
when philosophy regained independence at the dawn of
the modern age, it did not shake this heavily theoretical
bent, not until the well known exceptions provided by
Nietzsche and the existentialists, among others. And, I
would add, by modern Stoics. Epictetus was openly
scornful of philosophy conceived as a purely theoretical
exercise:

“‘Come and listen to me read my commentaries. … I

will explain Chrysippus to you like no one else can, and I’ll
provide a complete analysis of his entire text. … If
necessary, I can even add the views of Antipater and
Archedemos.’ … So it’s for this, is it, that young men are to
leave their fatherlands and their own parents: to come and

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listen to you explain words? Tri ing little words?”
(Discourses, III.21.7-8)

Let us then go back to philosophy as a way of life, a

search for our authentic selves, and a preparation for our
own inevitable demise. Philosophy is love of wisdom, not
love of tri ing words.

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 III-Socrates and the finest state of the human soul

I’m going to bet that it is going to be hard to nd

anyone who has never heard of Socrates. Even in this world
of social media and alternative realities the name of
Socrates is essentially synonymous with philosophy. Which
doesn’t mean one necessarily knows anything about the
sage of Athens, or about philosophy. (Which is fair enough.
I can name Taylor Swift, for instance, but not a single one of
her songs…)
Pierre Hadot, in his in uential Philosophy as a Way of
Life is interested in Socrates, not necessarily the historical
person, about which it is hard to say much anyway, but the
philosophical gure, which has become a symbol for
philosophy itself.
He begins with his (alleged) physical appearance.
Socrates was ugly, by universal agreement of all the
available sources: Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. As
Nietzsche put it: “Everything in him is exaggerated, buffo, a
caricature.” (Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates,
3-4) Hadot writes:

“Alcibiades, in his famous speech in praise of Socrates

at the end of the Symposium, compares Socrates to the
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little statues of Sileni [a kind of ugly satyr] that could be
found in sculptors’ shops, which concealed little gurines
of the gods inside themselves. Similarly, Socrates’ exterior
appearance—ugly, buffoon-like, impudent, almost mon-
strous—was only a mask and a facade.” (p. 148)

And it wasn’t just his physical appearance. Socrates

often behaved like a buffoon, pretending to be naive and
not too bright. In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades says: “He
spends his whole life playing the part of a simpleton and a
child.” (216e)

Socrates, Capitoline Museum, Rome, photo by the Author

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 Like children do, Socrates famously went around asking
questions to people. But unlike those of a child, his
questions were only super cially simple. The goal was not
to obtain knowledge, but rather to trigger aporia, or
confusion, in his interlocutors, so that people started
doubting whether they really knew what they were talking
about (usually, they didn’t). If they got to the point of
admitting their ignorance that was their rst step toward
wisdom. Know thyself, was the injunction of the Oracle at
Delphi, and the starting point of self-knowledge is
awareness of our own limitations.
After Socrates died, a whole literary genre arose, known
as logoi sokratikoi, where the authors imitated the Socratic
style and method. In these dialogues, Socrates himself
appeared as a prosopon, a character, or mask. But one can
argue that Socrates was already a character in Plato’s own
dialogues, which is why it is so dif cult to distinguish Plato’s
philosophy from that of his teacher, an issue that scholars
have labeled the Socratic problem.
Be that as it may, from a pedagogical perspective
Socrates understood that one is not very effective by
directly telling people the truth. In a sense, they have to be
deceived into arriving at the truth themselves. Not through
one-sided lectures, but through what we today call the
Socratic method. That’s why Socrates presented himself as
a philosophical midwife:

“I am like the midwife, in that I cannot myself give birth

to wisdom.” (Plato, Theaetetus, 148e)

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Alcibiades Being Taught by Socrates (1776) by François-
André Vincent (Musée Fabre), Wikimedia

But that famous image is itself deceptive. While

Socrates goes on in the Theaetetus to say that he doesn’t
really have any wisdom, which is why he cannot transmit it
to others, that’s plain nonsense. Even a super cial
examination of the Socratic dialogues shows that Socrates
knows very well were he wants to nudge his interlocutors.
But he has to pretend not to know anything, so that they
lower their guard and willingly let the midwife do his job.
Nietzsche again:

“An educator never says what he himself thinks, but

always only what he thinks of a thing in relation to the
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requirements of those he educates. He must not be
detected in this dissim lation.” (Posthumous Fragments,
June-July 1885)

There is no doubt that Socrates’ self-deprecation was

feigned, and this was clear already in antiquity. Just ask
Cicero:

“By disparaging himself, Socrates used to concede

more than was necessary to the adversaries he wanted to
refute. Thus, thinking one thing and saying another, he
enjoyed using the kind of dissimulation which the Greeks
call ‘irony’.” (Lucullus, 15)

But why would a teacher engage in this sort of

sustained deception of his students? Because teaching is
not a process of lling up otherwise empty minds with the
wisdom and knowledge of the teacher. It’s about the
student learning how to think. The Socratic approach
makes it possible for the pupil to experience in the rst
person what the activity of the mind consists of, what we
refer to as critical thinking. The goal, again, is not
knowledge, but mindful doubt. It’s about the process, not
the result.
Interestingly, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia there is a bit
where the Sophist Hippias loses his patience with Socrates
and says that he (Socrates) would do well to stop asking
questions about justice and, once and for all, just tell us
what justice is. To which Socrates responds: “If I don’t

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reveal my views on justice in words, I do so by my conduct.”
(Memorabilia, IV.4.10)

Nietzsche, Wikimedia

Socrates is very conscious of his chosen mission in life.

He states it explicitly in Plato’s Apology:

“I care nothing for what most people care about:

money-making, administration of property, generalships,
success in public debates, magistracies, coalitions, and
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political factions. … I did not choose that path, but rather
the one by which I could do the greatest good to each of
you in particular: by trying to persuade each of you to
concern himself less about what he has that about what he
is, so that he may make himself as good and as reasonable
as possible.” (Apology, 36b)

I just love the notion of becoming concern less with

what we have and more with who we are. Again, “know
thyself,” not “own as much crap as possible.”
According to Nietzsche (in Posthumous Fragments,
April-June 1885) Socrates’ “irony,” that is, passing himself
for a simpleton while he was nothing of the kind, was what
gave him access to people from all walks of life. They
opened up to him because he wasn’t pretentious and did
not appear intellectually threatening.
It must be noted that Socrates did not establish a
philosophical school. He didn’t build something like Plato’s
Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, Epicurus’ Garden, or Zeno’s
Stoa. Hadot comments (p. 157) that his philosophy was a
spiritual exercise, an invitation to a whole way of life
founded on active re ection and conscious living.
Famously, in the Symposium, Socrates and Alcibiades
refer to what they are experiencing as eros, but the word
has two very different meanings. One is the standard
connotation of erotic love, which modern English has
inherited; the other is love of beauty and wisdom. As a
result of his love for Socrates, Alcibiades turns out to be in
a wretched condition, as he says himself:

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 “I am the one who has been reduced to slavery, and I’m
in the state of a man bitten by a viper. I’ve been bitten in
the heart, or the mind, or whatever you like to call it, by
Socrates’ philosophy. … The moment I hear him speak I am
smitten with a kind of sacred rage, … and my heart jumps
into my mouth and the tears start into my eyes. I’m not the
only one, either; there’s Charmides, and Euthydemus, and
ever so many more. He’s made fools of them all, just as if
he were the beloved, not the lover.” (Symposium, 217-222)

Obviously, Alcibiades is in love with Socrates’ wisdom,

not his physical appearance—since he’s very ugly.
Nevertheless, Alcibiades confuses the two meanings of
eros and concocts a scheme to have sex with Socrates by
spending the night on the same couch. But Socrates
behaves like a brother to Alcibiades, not allowing himself
to be lured by the youth’s stunning physical beauty.
Stunningly, the attraction Alcibiades, Charmides,
Euthydemus and others had for Socrates spanned the
centuries. In 1772 Goethe wrote in a letter to a friend: “If
only I could be Alcibiades for one day and one night, and
then die!”
It is hard to nd a better way to end this essay, and at
the same time express my hope for the future of
philosophy, than by transcribing what Nietzsche wrote
about Socrates in Human, All Too Human:

“If all goes well, the time will come when one will take
up the Memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a

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guide to morals and reason. … The pathways of the most
various philosop ical modes of life lead back to him. …
Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in possessing a
joyful kind of seriousness and that wisdom full of
roguishness that constitutes the nest state of the human
soul.” (§86, vol. 2, pp. 591-2)

Amen.

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 IV-Only the present is our happiness

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote a letter to his

long-time correspondent, the composer Carl Friedrich
Zelter, to lament our inability to live in the present moment,
to grasp its essential healthiness. The Greco-Romans, says
Goethe, understood that the present is pregnant with
meaning, and to them it was suf cient in itself. By contrast,
Goethe continues, for us moderns the ideal is the future,
while we consider the present to be banal.

“Then the spirit looks neither ahead nor behind. Only

the present is our happiness.” (Second Faust)

Pierre Hadot—in his Philosophy as a Way of Life—

reminds us of Goethe’s analysis, adding that the ancients
articulated the concept of kairos, the favorable or decisive
instant. To be able to grasp the kairos is the key to our
accomplishments. For instance, a good general strikes
when the kairos is right; a good artist xes in marble or on
canvas the best kairos of whatever scene she is working on;
and so forth.
But Hadot also warns against idealizing the Greco-
Romas, thinking that they somehow managed to live a life
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of bliss and lack of stress. On the contrary, they were just as
burdened by the past and preoccupied for the future as we
are. And that’s exactly what prompted the evolution of life
philosophies like Stoicism and Epicureanism. In fact. to
“convert” to a philosophical way of life means, to a great
extent, to develop a renewed appreciation for the
healthiness of the moment as a way to achieve serenity.
Both Epicureanism and Stoicism—otherwise so different
from each other—insist on the crucial importance of the
present and teach us not to worry about either the past or
the future. One way they do that is by reminding us of the
cosmic perspective, compared to which the span of a
human existence is negligible. Adopting the view from
above, there is no meaningful difference between the
various moments of our lives. But our agency is effective
only in the present. We can’t change the past, and we can’t
control the future.
Hadot tackles rst Epicureanism, reminding us that it is
a philosophy conceived of as a therapy of anguish, whose
goal is ataraxia, or peace of mind. The Epicureans train
themselves not to worry about the gods, who are
unconcerned about human affairs; or about death, since
whenever she is we are not; or about satisfying desires that
are unnatural and outsized, and which therefore are a
cause of constant stress; or, nally, about being overly
concerned with virtue, since we are imperfect beings
bound to fail.

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 “According to Epicureanism, senseless people—that is,
the majority of mankind—are tormented by vast, hollow
desires which have to do with wealth, glory, power, and the
unbridled pleasures of the esh. What is characteristic of all
these desires is that they cannot be satis ed in the
present.” (p. 223)

Horace—he of “carpe diem”—portrayed by Giacomo Di

Chirico, Wikimedia

The Epicurean solution is to reconceive pleasure so that

it doesn’t depend on quantity or duration. The focus is,

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rather, on natural pleasures that are satis ed easily in the
moment: quenching one’s thirst, taking care of one’s
hunger, appreciating one’s friends.

“While we are talking, jealous time has ed. So seize the

day [carpe diem], and put no trust in tomorrow.” (Horace,
Odes, I.11.7)

This famous verse by Horace is often misinterpreted as

being about instant grati cation of sensual pleasures, just
like Epicureanism itself is often misunderstood to be the
sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll of ancient philosophy. But in
fact, carpe diem is an invitation to philosophical
conversion, to become aware of the vanity of desires that
cannot easily be ful lled, of our mortality, of the
uniqueness and brevity of our lives. Hence the focus on the
supreme importance of the current instant, for which we
ought to be grateful.
The Stoic approach, while in certain respects de nitely
distinct from the Epicurean, amounts to a similar emphasis
on the present. We are encouraged to pay attention to the
here and now, hic et nunc as the Romans put it. We need to
be constantly vigilant, focused on the current moment so
that we don’t miss what’s going on in our own life. This
attitude is nicely summarized by Marcus Aurelius:

“Here is what is enough for you:

1. The judgment you are bringing to bear at this
moment upon reality, as long as it is objective;

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 2. The action you are carrying out at this moment, as
long as it is accomplished in the service of the human
community; and
3. The inner disposition in which you nd yourself at this
moment, as long as it is a disposition of joy in the face of
the conjunction of events caused by extraneous causality.”
(Meditations, IX.6)

Marcus Aurelius, bust at the Diocletian Baths, Rome, photo

by the Author

Marcus engages in a spiritual exercise that he calls

“delimiting the present.” It is based on a dual Stoic
treatment of time. According to Stoic physics, time is
in nitely divisible, which means that, technically speaking,

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the present does not exist, as it is de ned as the limit
between past and future. To this metaphysically abstract
notion of time, however, the Stoics added another one that
is human-centered and consciousness-dependent. In this
second case, the present acquires what Hadot calls “a
certain thickness,” delimited by the attention span of
human consciousness. When Marcus says that we should
delimit the present and stick to it, what he deploys is this
second Stoic conception of time.
The exercise, then, consists in focusing on the present,
leaving the past behind, entrusting the future to the cosmic
web of cause-effect, and making sure that we are acting,
right now, as a decent human being would. The rest will
come or not, as the universes disposes of things. We nd
something similar also in Seneca:

“Two things must be cut short: the fear of the future and
the memory of past discomfort; the one does not concern
me any more, and the other does not concern me yet.”
(Letters to Lucilius, XVIII.14)

Hadot summarizes the attitude by saying that happiness

is a matter of now or never. If we are not happy now, by
focusing on what is up to us—that is, our character, virtue,
and judgment—then we’ll never be happy, regardless of
how many material possessions and how much fame (both
not up to us) we might accumulate. Moreover, there is a
sense of urgency, because death approaches, and we have
no idea when it will come. As Epictetus puts it:

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 “Keep in mind that now is the contest, and here right
now are the Olympic games, and that postponement is no
longer an option, and that your progress is saved or ruined
by a single day and a single action.” (Encheiridion, 51)

You want to be a good person? Just be one, without

delay. What are you waiting for? What better moment
might there be? How many moments do you know for
certain you will have? Marcus Aurelius says repeatedly
(Meditations, II.5.2, VII.69) that we should get into the habit
of living our lives as if today were the last day. Because it
could be. And because if it isn’t, then we’ve used every
moment of this day in the best way possible. Nothing
focuses our attention as the awareness that time is running
out.
This may actually sound stressful, but the Stoic
constantly resituates herself within the cosmic perspective,
putting her life, troubles, and accomplishments in the
context of vast space and time. If she is truly able to do this,
then her anxieties will disappear because she will be able
to perceive things from the point of view of universal
reason, which tells us that we simply have to do our best
while we can and that nothing else is up to us. Rightly, I
think, Hadot says:

“One could speak here of a mystical dimension of

Stoicism. At each moment and every instant, we must say
‘yes’ to the universe; that is, to the will of universal reason.

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We must want that which universal reason wants: that is,
the present instant, exactly as it is.” (p. 230)

This congruence of Epicureanism and Stoicism when it

comes to living life in the moment is remarkable. The
difference between the two schools here is one of attitude:
the Epicurean’s goal is to enjoy the present moment, while
the Stoic’s goal is to align her will with that moment.
Pleasure vs duty, if you wish. Is it possible to combine the
two? Hadot claims that such a hybrid was exactly what
Goethe practiced, enjoying the present moment like an
Epicurean, willing it intensely like a Stoic.
It is important to note, however, that living in the
moment does not mean ignoring either past or future. The
idea is not to let our thoughts be dominated by regret for
the past or anxiety for the future. We still wish to learn from
our past experiences and plan for our future. But the best
way to do the former is to use the present as context (what,
about my past, is pertinent to me, now?), and the best way
to do the latter is to exercise good judgment now.
This is what Socrates meant when he said that we ought
to take good care of ourselves. And this is what our
consumerist society gets in the way of doing, with its
constant distractions and arti cial worries about both past
and especially the future. Let us instead go back to the true
meaning of carpe diem, to the essential healthiness of the
present moment.

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